Progress has costs. Sometimes, those costs are jobs. Sometimes, they are people. Sometimes, it can be whole villages also. What to do? The bulldozer of development cannot be stopped, certainly not by trying to lie in front of it.

So what are the people of Chanala to do when they are told their village is being demolished to make way for a new factory? They’re out of time and out of ideas.

Then, a lightning bolt – an ingenious plan from the most unexpected source: a (former) consultant, the disgraced Ashish.

The scheme: start a fake consulting firm, get hired by the company building the factory, and sabotage the project from the inside.

We produced this pilot completely independently from start to finish. We wrote it, cast it, directed it, produced it, and edited it ourselves. We spent several days shooting in and around Mumbai, and way too long making it work in the edit bay. After what feels like an age, we’re finally ready to show it to a doubtless grateful nation.

The pilot is now live on YouTube, completely free to watch! If you like it, please share it and subscribe to Honesty is Best for more.

Watch the episode here:

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The Brothers Sankaran (@sohamsankaran and @sahajsankaran) do not endorse any of their own opinions due to congenital cowardice.

Direct any complaints towards the Honesty Is Best support desk.

No, don’t write about it! Sir, things will get very difficult – of course honesty is best, but how can you defame? You keep saying you have the right, right, right to free speech – kahan se aaye yeh sab rights, and where are the duties? Duty to grow the national economy, now number 4! If you defame and stop people from buying, how will we become number 3, 2, 1? So, is it FIR or no FIR? No? You’ll take the complementary gift basket and be on your way? Very wise, sir, aap toh vakai buddhiman nikle!

Sorry, I got interrupted – I was dealing with this oversmart specimen. Where was I? We’re here to tell you the truth. Well, sort of. We’re here to make you laugh, which is almost the same thing. In a nation of absurdities, laughter is the advance guard of the truth – it reminds us of the harsh realities we’ve been asked to thoda adjust to all this time.

So we’re here to make you laugh. Not about people – people are just symptoms. We’re not here to jab at one politician or the other, this robber baron or that one, the horrific cult in the North or the one in the South – we avoid that for reasons of principle, and because we can’t begin to afford the fees charged by the distinguished members of the Supreme Court Bar Association. What we’re going to do instead is take the rules, laws, and cultural customs that scaffold the kaleidoscopic canvas of the world we live in and stretch them all the way to their logical extremes, right up until the paper tears to expose the insanity that lies beneath.

For legal reasons, never forget that what we make is merely satire, even if the most absurd distortions of our reality that we can conjure up are not so different from the terrifying truth.

With apologies to Jaspal Bhatti, welcome to Honesty is Best!

— Soham & Sahaj Sankaran, July 2025, India.

Honesty is Best is pleased to present our first comedy series, Ungli, in which two broke brothers discover India’s Electoral Bonds scheme, and hatch a brilliant plan – starting a fake political party to launder money from abroad.

Watch Ungli Episode 1: Asli Party below, and subscribe on YouTube to catch future episodes before we get cancelled and/or sell out:

Honesty is Best, so why not get it delivered straight to your inbox? Subscribe below if you haven’t already.

The Brothers Sankaran (@sohamsankaran and @sahajsankaran) do not endorse any of their own opinions due to congenital cowardice.

Direct any complaints towards the Honesty Is Best support desk.